The most rewarding performance on the set is the Violin Concerto featuring the young Boris Belkin in his US début. He brings genuinely deep emotion to his playing and succeeds in deflecting attention from the podium. Bernstein is generous and supportive in his accompaniment and the slow movement in particular offers genuine poetry and sensitivity in short supply elsewhere . . . Both orchestras undeniably play their socks off. The dynamism and precision of the 1970s New Yorkers is very telling . . . and the Boston Symphony retains its distinctive transparency and civilized qualitites inherited from Koussevitzky and Munch . . .

Record Review /
Ian Julier,
International Record Review (London) / 01. February 2009

Belkin's performance is an interesting one, and it offers more than simple flashiness. . . . Bernstein pays close attention to him throughout the concerto -- taking his mind off of himself! -- and applauds him at length at the work's end. . . . This is a singularly Koussevitzky-like performance of the Fifth Symphony . . . a thrilling and personal Tchaikovsky Fifth, and well worth returning to.